Facebook, Blogs, Twitter and the Writers’ Brain

My writing fingers had atrophied. My creativity, energy and passion were flowing into the business.

Writing is a habit, and I had lost it. My mind was inhabited by spreadsheets, pounds, dollars, euros, instead of shapely sentences.

But, surely, there was something interesting in my day?

I committed to write one facebook status update a day, observing what there was to observe–the blond ponytailed workman building our conservatory, sunset, the garden, my collie, my ducks and rabbits, my children, my husband, what they cooked, my progress in decluttering my house. Some of the status updates, no doubt, were boring and repetitive, but I didn’t care.

Rilke says that the meanest, most confined life should be able to yield poetry. And if it does not, don’t blame it, blame yourself. Realize that you are not enough of a poet to bring from poetry from your every day life.

How put a complex thought or experience or insight into 420 characters? It took work–and creativity.

Soon however, my brain changed. I knew instinctively what I could get into 420 characters, what to edit out, when I was reaching it. I could write a funny little, or elegant little status in 420 characters effortlessly.
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Then a friend introduced me to his friend as the composer of elegant Facebook statuses. Ouch! Is that what I had come to?

Roy protested, “What’s the sense in taking all this time to make money for Facebook, through their ads? Stick your statuses on a blog, stick on some google ads, and make some money for yourself.”

And when the time was right, I attempted that, and found blogging so enjoyable in itself that I rapidly lost interest in Google ads, and soon stripped them off.

And now, and now…. I think in blog posts. I see experience in terms of blog posts. I cast my thoughts in blog posts–beginning, middle, end. It’s like viewing life through blog glasses (rosy-coloured blog glasses).

And, with experience, I can write blog posts rapidly, in just the right voice for a blog post. About 15-20 minutes for a post, plus revisions. (I took typing classes in my twenties, and that is paying off!).
* * *

What about Twitter? What would becoming really active on Twitter do my brain? I know I would begin thinking in 140 characters.  And would I unconsciously not pursue complex thoughts, which I could not reduce to 140 characters?

Twitter is an invaluable tool for writers–it teaches you elegance, succinctness and clear thinking in 140 characters.

But, occasionally, like J. Alfred Prufrock, we’ll just have to lament, “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons” of sentences.

And will our activity in social media–blogging, facebook and twitter diminish our capacity for the concentrated thought necessary for essays or longer books? We are living in the middle of an unfolding experiment, and will just have to wait and see!!